The prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, said yesterday his efforts to restore democratic freedoms and the rule of law to his country had so far failed.

Tsvangirai took his Movement for Democratic Change into a coalition government with autocratic President Robert Mugabe in February to end the country's political deadlock and economic collapse. But he gave the party's annual convention a bleak assessment of Zimbabwe's situation and said hard-liners backing Mugabe were frustrating progress. "We have not yet succeeded in restoring the rule of law ... our people do not live free from fear, hunger and poverty," he said. But Tsvangirai has so far shown no sign that he will pull the MDC out of the coalition in protest.